Networking is a key part of working life worldwide – research shows 90% of Arab entrepreneurs believe connections are important to their businesses, a figure that reaches almost 100% in China. For sole traders and small businesses trying to stand out in a crowded marketplace, drawing on those personal connections is particularly profitable, with almost 20% of SMEs gaining half their new customers through online networking alone.

Certainly we're all familiar with the saying 'it's not what you know, but who you know'. However, there's more to the story than that.

It's not just about meeting people

Successful networking isn't just about building connections and meeting new people. It's about maintaining those connections and, crucially, making them work for you. A connection which doesn't add value is worthless to your business.

For entrepreneurs who've started out on their own, networking provides a key sounding board to test your ideas and gather new perspectives. Regus research shows that over 62% of businesses globally believe that interaction with other professionals is key to keeping their skills up-to-date.

It's also a central part of building your brand. For sole traders, being able to present an authoritative image is a significant part of winning client trust when competing with much larger, more established companies. This means that it's not just learning from others which is important in networking, but also sharing your own skills and knowledge and building yourself a trusted position among your peers.

The bigger, the better

Even if you're managing to maintain and leverage your connections, that still isn't always enough – particularly if your network is small. Wherever your sales go, so too should your networking – and beyond. Flexible working allows many entrepreneurs to join projects across the globe, so it's just as important to cultivate contacts abroad, through the use of social media such as LinkedIn or Twitter, as it is back at home. As long as you're successfully keeping up your contacts, a wider network gives you easy access to more shared experience and inroads into new professional groups.